Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1885 — A Novel Court House. [ARTICLE]

A Novel Court House.

At Magipe Bay I left the steamer, launched the Allegro once more, and returned to my primitive mode of travel. As I paddled toward the beach, the little cove was very animated, with a large fleet of fishing barges coming in to the two wharves, and with groups of men at work on the docks and about the flakes and buildings scattered along the terraced hills. And the cordial hospitality of the agents of the fishing firms added still more to the impression that one was in civilization. It is well to give here at least one of the peculiar scenes connected with this part of the coast The country Judge, Mr. O’Brien, was holding court in a building on the hill, to administer justice then for the entire year. The county Court House is a small yacht, ■the Euby, then riding at anchor within the bar; she moves up and down the coast during the summer, and anchors at any place where her presence may be required. The judge, seems well fitted for the post, being a dignified and portly man of an easy-going nature, who can wait any length of time for a fair wind, while his twinkling eye seeks more for fun than for the sternness of justice. As he was the only officer, the court was < organized by his sitting down behind a deal table, and telling the people that they must be silent excepting when called on to plead their causes, or give evidence. One case was nominally the trial of a man for stealing an auger; but as the Norman blood of the defendant and plaintiff warmed to their national recreation of disputing, they became tremulous with excitement, and turning their backs to the court, passed a half-hour in mutual recrimination, in the course of which lyas revealed the real pojnt at issue—a fight that had occurred the past winter. Here their wives came in and added the chorus of their shrill testimony; and, taken altogether, the uproar was, at, last, too much for even the placid judge; he

X f : ~.CV turned them all out, and court adjourned for a cigar and a rest. Once outside, the litigants had the affair all, over again in their own 4 way. And finally the case could not be decided until the auger cpuld be produced. Another case was a charge of assault and battery with knives, which the rougher characters of the coast use too frequently instead of their fists. A suit brought for libel was announced by the husband of the plaintiff as a case of “inflamation de charactere.” And so the proceedings of this unique court continued their revelation of some of the manners and traits of the people.— C. H. Farnham, in Harper's Magazine.